Golden image

After Daniel 3:13-25 

Placed there, huge

and extravagant, 

the statue of gold

looms over all,

created from fear

and its twin power,

demanding worship,

obeisance, surrender,

and bending the knee

in adoration. Refusal

is death.

 

Its demand is met 

by almost all, except

the three, the young men

who refused to bend 

the knee, the three who

followed their hearts

in conflict with the law

demanding all obey.

 

The penalty is fire,

instant incineration,

designed to provoke

fear and to inspire

compliance. The three

accept their sentence.

 

The degrees of the furnace:

warm: ridicule, disregard,

exclusion;

hot: mugging, beating,

thuggery;

fiery: imprisoned, torture,

execution, incineration,

oblivion.

 

Sentenced to die 

in the fire, the three

are tossed into the furnace,

the expectation being

incineration and

destruction, forgotten

as ash. The three walk

within the furnace, 

joined by a fourth,

a fourth man who saves

them from death, 

a fourth man who looks

like a son of the gods.

 

Photograph by K8 via Unsplash. Used with permission.